Handing over MetOp-C

12 November 2018

Mission teams at ESA's ESOC operations centre in Germany handed control of the recently launched MetOp-C satellite to Eumetsat, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, on Saturday morning, just three days after launch.

In doing so, they also say a final farewell to the extremely successful MetOp-series of weather-probing satellites.

MetOp-C was launched into orbit on 7 November on top of a Soyuz rocket. Since then, teams at ESA's mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, have been carefully introducing the satellite to its new home in space.

These early days are called the ‘Launch and Early Orbit Phase' (LEOP), and they mark some of the most critical moments in a satellite's young life.